Does ‘‘Science’’ Make You Moral?

The Effects of Priming

Science on Moral Judgments and Behavior
Christine Ma-Kellams*, Jim Blascovich
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, United States of America

Abstract
Background: Previous work has noted that science stands as an ideological force insofar as the answers it offers to a variety
of fundamental questions and concerns; as such, those who pursue scientific inquiry have been shown to be concerned
with the moral and social ramifications of their scientific endeavors. No studies to date have directly investigated the links
between exposure to science and moral or prosocial behaviors.

Methodology/Principal Findings: Across four studies, both naturalistic measures of science exposure and experimental
primes of science led to increased adherence to moral norms and more morally normative behaviors across domains. Study
1 (n = 36) tested the natural correlation between exposure to science and likelihood of enforcing moral norms. Studies 2
(n = 49), 3 (n = 52), and 4 (n = 43) manipulated thoughts about science and examined the causal impact of such thoughts on
imagined and actual moral behavior. Across studies, thinking about science had a moralizing effect on a broad array of
domains, including interpersonal violations (Studies 1, 2), prosocial intentions (Study 3), and economic exploitation (Study
4).

Conclusions/Significance: These studies demonstrated the morally normative effects of lay notions of science. Thinking
about science leads individuals to endorse more stringent moral norms and exhibit more morally normative behavior. These
studies are the first of their kind to systematically and empirically test the relationship between science and morality. The
present findings speak to this question and elucidate the value-laden outcomes of the notion of science.

Citation: Ma-Kellams C, Blascovich J (2013) Does ‘‘Science’’ Make You Moral? The Effects of Priming Science on Moral Judgments and Behavior. PLoS ONE 8(3):
e57989. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0057989
Editor: Luis M. Martinez, CSIC-Univ Miguel Hernandez, Spain
Received October 26, 2012; Accepted January 31, 2013; Published March 6, 2013
Copyright: ß 2013 Ma-Kellams, Blascovich. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: The authors have no support or funding to report.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
* E-mail: christinema@fas.harvard.edu

Introduction
Science has stood as a powerful force in shaping human
civilization and behavior. As both an ideological system and a
method for acquiring information about the world, it offers
explanations for the origins of the physical universe and answers to
a variety of other fundamental questions and concerns [1]. Past
research has noted that personal values influence both the
questions that are asked and the methods used in arriving at the
answers; as such, scientists have often been concerned with the
moral and social ramifications of their scientific endeavors [2,3].
Not surprisingly, the general consensus is that science is value-
laden [4–8]. However, no studies to date have directly investigated
the link between exposure to science and moral or prosocial
behaviors. Here, we empirically examined the effects of thinking
about science on moral judgments and behavior.
It is important to note that ‘‘science’’ is multi-faceted construct
that takes on distinct forms. On the one hand, the scientific style of
thinking employed by scientists is unusual, difficult, and uncom-
mon [9]. Although science can serve as a belief system, it is distinct
from other belief systems (e.g., religion) insofar as its counterin-
tuitive nature and the degree to which it does not rely on universal,
automatic, unconscious cognitive systems [9]; as a consequence,
relative to other belief systems like religion, science has few explicit
‘‘followers’’. On the other hand, apart from the model of the
scientific method of acquiring information about the world, we
contend that there is a lay image or notion of ‘‘science’’ that is
associated with concepts of rationality, impartiality, fairness,
technological progress, and ultimately, the idea that we are to
use these rational tools for the mutual benefit of all people in
society [10]. Philosophers and historians have noted that scientific
inquiry began to flourish when Western society moved from one
centered on religious notions of God’s will to one in which the
rational mind served as the primary means to understand and
improve our existence [10]. As such, the notion of science contains
in it the broader moral vision of a society in which rationality is
used for the mutual benefit of all.
We predict that this notion of science as part of a broader moral
vision of society facilitates moral and prosocial judgments and
behaviors. Consistent with the notion that science plays a key role
in the moral vision of a society of mutual benefit, scholars have
long argued that science’s systematic approach to studying causes
and consequences allows for more informed opinions about
questions of good and evil [11], and many have argued that the
classic scientific ethos stands as an ethically neutral, but morally
normative, set of principles that guides scientific inquiry [12]. We
contend that the same scientific ethos that serves to guide

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empirical inquiries also facilitates the enforcement of moral norms
more broadly.
Methods
The ethics committee at the Department of Psychology,
University of California, Santa Barbara, specifically approved this
study. All participants provided written informed consent.
Participants
Study 1. 48 undergraduates (18 men and 30 women ranged
18 to 24 years, mean age = 19.11, SD = 1.34) from the University
of California, Santa Barbara’s research participation pool were
recruited and received course credit for participation.
Study 2. 33 undergraduates (16 men and 17 women ranged
from 18 to 22 years, mean age = 18.67, SD = 1.02) from the
University of California, Santa Barbara’s research participation
pool were recruited and received course credit for participation.
Study 3. 32 volunteers (16 men and 16 women ranged from
18 to 28, mean age = 20.61, SD = 2.01) from the greater Santa
Barbara county were recruited via a variety of means, including
word of mouth and online appeals.
Study 4. 43 participants (15 men and 28 women from 18 to
22 years, mean age = 19.35, SD = 1.04) from the University of
California, Santa Barbara’s research participation pool were
recruited and received course credit for participation.
Design and Procedure
Across four studies, we investigated whether science promotes
moral or prosocial behavior. Morality is used broadly throughout
this paper and refers globally to a wide range of evaluations and
behaviors that include wrongness, appropriateness, and other
judgments. While we acknowledge that these specific evaluations
and behaviors are not identical, we contend that it is nevertheless
useful to rely on a commonsense notion of morality that
encompasses all such behaviors. Study 1 used naturalistic measures
of exposure to and belief in science and tested whether it predicted
the likelihood of enforcing moral norms. Studies 2–4 manipulated
thoughts about science and examined the causal impact of such
thoughts on both imagined (Studies 2, 3) as well as actual moral
behavior (Study 4). Across studies, we examined the effects of
science on a broad array of domains, including interpersonal
violations (Studies 1, 2), prosocial intentions (Study 3), and
economic exploitation (Study 4).
Materials
Study 1: Interpersonal Violations
In Study 1, participants read a date rape vignette [13] about
John and Sally, two acquaintances who are out on a date. After
John drives Sally home, Sally invites him in for a drink; afterwards,
John engages in non-consensual sex with her. After reading the
vignette, participants were asked judge the wrongness of John’s
behavior (i.e., of forcing non-consensual sex with Sally) on a scale
from 1 (completely right) to 100 (completely wrong). Afterwards,
all participants answered questions regarding their concentrated
field of study and the question ‘‘How much do you believe in
science?’’ on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much). In
addition, participants completed basic demographic information
(age, sex, whether or not they were religious, ethnicity).
Studies 2–4: Experimental Manipulations
Studies 2–4 relied on experimental manipulation of science-
related vs. control thoughts. Participants were randomly assigned
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Science, Moral Judgments and Behavior
to receive either a science or control prime. The primes involved a
series of sentence unscrambling tasks based on the materials used
by Shariff and Norenzayan [14]. Both primes involved ten sets of
five scrambled words, from which participants had to choose four
in order to form a complete sentence. For those in the science
condition, half of the sentences contained the key words: logical,
hypothesis, laboratory, scientists, and theory. Participants in the
control condition completed a similar prime except that all the
sentence scrambles contained neutral words (e.g., ‘‘shoes give
replace old the’’; ‘‘more paper it once do’’).
Study 2: Interpersonal Violation
In Study 2, all participants read the same vignette about date
rape and completed the same moral judgment rating used in Study
1.
Study 3: Prosocial Intentions
In Study 3, participants completed a prosocial intentions
measure [15]. Participants indicated the likelihood of engaging
in each of several behaviors in the following month, including
prosocial activities (donating to charity, giving blood, volunteering)
and distractor activities (attending a party, going on vacation,
seeing a movie); the order of activities was randomly presented.
Study 4: Economic Exploitation
In Study 4, participants completed a behavioral measure of
economic exploitation post-experimental manipulation. Partici-
pants played an economics dictator game modeled after the
procedures used by Shariff and Norenzayan [14]. Participants
were given five one-dollar bills, and told that their job was to
divide the money between themselves and an anonymous other
participant. Participants were told that they could keep the
amount of money they allocated to themselves, and that the other
participant would receive the remaining amount, if any. Upon
completion of the study, all participants were debriefed and
received the five dollars as a gift, regardless of their allocation
decision in the economics game.
Results
Study 1: Interpersonal Violations
Prior to data analysis, participants’ field of study was coded as
either a science (e.g. biology, chemistry, physics, psychology) or a
non-science field (e.g., art, communication, history, languages/
literature, music, sociology, theater).
Gender was not related to any of the variables of interest (all p’s
..14), so it will not be discussed. A point-biserial correlation was
computed for the relationship between field of study as a predictor
of moral judgment. Studying science was positively correlated with
both greater moral condemnation of the date rape act (i.e.,
studying science, relative to studying a non-science field, was
associated with rating the act of date rape as more wrong), r = .36,
p = .011. Belief in science in general was also positively correlated
with moral condemnation of the date rape act (i.e., those who
reported greater belief in science rated the date rape as more
wrong), r = .65, p,.001. Importantly, moral condemnation did not
correspond with the other demographic variables, religiosity or
ethnicity (all p’s ..46).
Study 2: Interpersonal Violation
There was no main effect of gender nor any gender by condition
interactions on the dependent variable of interest in Study 2 (all p’s
..22), so gender will no longer be mentioned. In Study 2, those
primed with science responded more severely to the moral
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transgression (i.e., condemned the act as more wrong; M = 95.95,
SD = 4.37) relative to those in the control condition (M = 81.57,
SD = 5.09), F(1, 31) = 4.58, p = .040.
Study 3: Prosocial Intentions
Likewise in Study 3, there was no main effect of gender nor any
gender by condition interactions on the dependent variable of
interest. Those primed with science reported greater prosocial
intentions (i.e., increased likelihood of donating to charity, giving
blood, and volunteering; M = 4.14, SD = 1.49) relative to those in
the control condition (M = 3.44, SD = 0.98), F(1, 31) = 5.64,
p = .024.
Study 4: Economic Exploitation
There was a main effect of gender on the dependent variable of
interest, money allocated, F(1, 55) = 4.98, p = .030. Women
allocated more money to themselves (M = 3.32, SD = 1.23) than
men (M = 2.35, SD = 1.32). However, no gender by condition
interaction emerged, F(2, 55) = 1.22, p = .30. As predicted, those in
the science condition allocated less money to themselves (M = 2.71,
SD = 1.43) than those in the control condition (M = 2.84,
SD = 1.11), t(41) = 2.06, p = .046.
Discussion
Across the four studies presented here, we demonstrated the
morally normative effects of thinking about science. Priming lay
notions of science leads individuals to endorse more stringent
moral norms (Studies 1, 2), report greater prosocial intentions
(Study 3), and exhibit more morally normative behavior (Study 4).
The moralizing effects of science were observed both by using
naturalistic measures of exposure to science (e.g., field of study) as
well as laboratory manipulations of thought-accessibility, and
emerged across a broad array of domains, including interpersonal
violations (Study 1), academic dishonesty (Studies 2), prosocial
behaviors (Study 3), and economic exploitation (Study 4).
It is important to note that the primes used across all studies
activated broad, general, lay notions of science rather than specific
scientific findings. The key words used the science primes (logical,
hypothesis, laboratory, scientists, and theory) were likely associated
with semantic notions of rationality, impartiality and progress–
notions that are a part of the broader moral view of science as a
way of building a mutually beneficial society in which rational
tools are used to improve the human condition. The moralizing
effects of priming this broad idea of science diverges from previous
studies that have focused on the effects of activating specific
scientific findings–for example, Vohs and Schooler’s finding that
those exposed to scientific findings about humans lacking free will
were more likely to cheat [16].
Taken together, the present results provide support for the idea
that the study of science itself–independent of the specific
conclusions reached by scientific inquiries–holds normative
implications and leads to moral outcomes. Previous research has
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